Emerging strains of the flu virus are very close to becoming pandemic, bugs capable of killing millions of people. This stark realization prompted a young researcher named Eric Chen to accelerate the development of new antiviral drugs that could save lives. For his efforts he took top prize at the Google Science Fair Monday — he’s just 17 years old.

“I felt like this was a really urgent problem and I thought, well, why can’t I use this new computational power at our fingertips in order to speed up this process and find new anti-flu medicine,” Google Science Fair grand prize winner Eric Chen of San Diego, Calif., told NBC News